Prisms of Perception(2012)

Prisms of Perception(2012)

Director: Gigi Scaria
Country: India
Runtime:3 min
Video Art

Gigi Scaria did his BFA in painting at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, and his MFA at the Jamia Millia University. His work focuses on issues of change, unsettlement, immigration, exodus and non-belonging. Scaria attempts to draw the viewer’s attention towards the painful truths of displacement.

Polluting Paradise(2012)

Polluting Paradise(2012)
Director: Fatih Akin
Country: Germany
Runtime:85 min

Ten years ago, the government of Turkey decided to dump waste in the hills above the Black Sea village of Çamburnu. The villagers' struggle against the Turkish state's decision has lasted as long – the mayor and the whole village against Ministers of State, judges and financial interests. How can they possibly succeed against these powerful institutions? Director Fatih Akin takes a devastating look at the small village whose health and security are threatened by the introduction of the garbage dump. Situated in a defunct copper mine, the refuse heap pollutes groundwater and streams and fills the air with terrible odors. Akin keeps his cameras rolling over the course of five years as community members, including elderly residents and schoolchildren, fight the smug bureaucrats who signed off on the dump, while they attempt to maintain their daily existence as farmers, fishermen and students. Akin does what all good activist filmmakers do best: expose the stark divide between everyday citizens and the people who supposedly represent them, urging viewers not to let a similar fate befall their hometowns.

Boy Eating the Bird's Food (2012)

Boy Eating the Bird's Food (2012)

Director:Ektoras Lygizos
Country: Greece
Runtime:80 min

Boy Eating the Bird’s Food, inspired by Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun’s 1890 novel, Hunger, tells the story of Yorgos (Yiannis Papadopoulos) a twenty-two year old living an isolated life in modern day Athens and on the brink of poverty and starvation. He is estranged from his family and only really has one true friend – his beloved pet canary. Quite like a bird himself, Yorgos has a beautiful singing voice and occasionally shares his canary’s birdseed.

The whole film is an unashamed metaphor for the mood of the people of modern day Greece. A sense of frustration reverberates throughout the film stemming from the fact that Yorgos’ passion and talents are being stifled due to a lack of financial independence. This escalates into the protagonist resorting to more and more desperate measures to keep himself alive and to retain some level of sanity and self-worth.

Employing the use of shaky cam and extreme close up shots, the film is uncomfortably intimate, obsessive and even intrusive into Yorgos’ everyday life. Thus we can’t help but sympathise with this character, having seen him at his most private and vulnerable. Lygizos describes using a small camera from early on in the rehearsal process so that Papadopoulos could become “used to me being his ‘co-player’ – not a co-star, not another actor, but instead his subtle shadow.”

Yorgos’ is deliberately denied a social context or background history in order to convey the message that his story is indeed a ubiquitous one in Greece and the emphasis remains on the obvious metaphor. Greece’s abandonment by Germany is symbolically present within the classical German language piece Yorgos chooses to sing for an audition early in the film. It is no mere coincidence that Yorgos doesn’t understand the lyrics and furthermore, that he fails the audition.

Boy Eating the Bird’s Food is a powerful, uncomfortably honest and truly devastating portrayal of a young man struggling not only to feed and house himself, but also clutching onto a fading sense of identity, masculinity and self-worth. A brave performance from Papadopoulos in Lygizos’ accomplished debut feature film; well deserving of all the critical acclaim it will undoubtedly receive on the festival circuit and beyond.

Khan Khanne (2014)

Khan Khanne (2014)

Director:Jean-Luc Godard
Runtime:     8mn 46s




Jean-Luc Godard did not attend the world premiere of his new film, ADIEU AU LANGAGE (GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE), at Cannes. But instead, he sent a letter in motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux, the directors of the Festival.
Made public the 21/05/2014.

Ida (2013)

Ida (2013)

Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Country:Poland
Runtime: 80 min


Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love), this story of faith and despair is gracefully told, its simple, uncluttered spaces and luminous black-and-white photography harking back to Robert Bresson. Innocent young Ida (Agata Trzebuchowska), raised in a Polish convent and preparing to take her vows, is persuaded by the Mother Superior to make contact with her only known relative, an aunt (Agata Kulesza) who reveals to the young novitiate that her father was Jewish and her parents both died in the Nazi occupation. Hoping to uncover the details, the two women set off for the family's hometown, where the romantic attentions of a handsome young sax player in the hotel bar prove almost as troubling to Ida as her parents' demise.

In Hiding (2013)

In Hiding (2013)

Director: Jan Kidawa-Blonski
Country: Poland
Runtime: 103 minute


Radom under Nazi occupation at the end of World War II. After the tragic death of her mother a young girl, Janina, lives alone with her father a photographer. He decides to give shelter to a young Jewish girl, Esther, the daughter of his friend who has been hiding in a small room under the floor. Initially Janina rebels against this situation, but soon begins to take an interest in the involuntary tenant. Gradually, curiosity turns into fascination. One day Janina’s father is arrested in street roundup and now Janina has to look after Esther alone. The young women start to live in almost complete isolation from the outside world: loneliness and fear bring them closer and closer. Mutual dramatic experiences make their relationship more intimate. When the war ends Janina hides the news from Ester and continues to keep her in hiding as her erotic fascination with Esther turns into an obsession.

The Notebook (2013)

The Notebook (2013)

Director: János Szász
Country: Hungary
Runtime: 109 min

Towards the end of World War II, people in big cities are at the mercy of air raids and death by starvation. A desperate young mother leaves her 13-year-old twin sons at their grandmother's house in the country, despite the fact that this grandmother is a cruel and bestial alcoholic. The villagers call her “the Witch” because she is rumoured to have poisoned her husband long ago.

Previously pampered, the twins must learn how to survive alone in their new, rural surroundings. They realise that the only way to cope with the absurd and inhumane world of adults and war is to become completely unfeeling and merciless. By learning to free themselves from hunger, pain and emotion, they will be able to endure future hardships. So they begin their own series of studies: they fortify their spirits by reading the Bible and learning foreign languages. They practice every day to harden their bodies and minds. They hold their hands over flames, cut their legs, arms and chests with a knife and pour alcohol right on their wounds. They desensitize themselves to insults and learn to ignore the more insidious appeals of sentiment and love.

The twins keep a written record of all they have witnessed during the war, the Notebook. When they write, they follow their own strict code: The prose must be free from emotion, the notes precise and objective.

Based on Agota Kristof's famous novel.

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (2013)

Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Country: Romania
Runtime: 89 min








Focused on a director and his leading actress while they are off the set. They discuss the discrepancies between film and digital cinema, Western and Eastern food, and try to capture an unfiltered (and seemingly impossible) sense of "reality" on film.

Television (2012)

Television (2012)

Director: Mostofa Sarwar Farooki
Country: Bangladesh
Runtime: 106 min 


As a leader of the local community, Chairman Amin bans every kind of image in his water-locked village in rural Bangladesh. He even goes on to claim that imagination is also sinful since it gives one the license to infiltrate into any prohibited territory. But change is a desperate wind that is difficult to resist by shutting the window. The tension between this traditional window and modern wind grows to such an extent that it starts to leave a ripple effect on the lives of a group of typically colorful, eccentric, and emotional people living in that village. But at the very end of the film, Television, which he hated so much, comes to the rescue and helps Chairman Amin reach a transcendental state where he and his God are unified. A new twist to the story makes him embrace IMAGE and IMAGINATION 

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013)

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013)

Director: Denis Côté
Country: Canada
Runtime: 95 min


Vic + Flow Saw a Bear is a darkly mysterious tale of lesbian two ex-cons, Victoria and Florence, trying to make a new life in the backwoods of Quebec. Seeking peace and quite, the couple the slowly begin to feel under siege as Vic's probation office keeps unexpectedly popping up and a strange woman in the neighborhood soon turns out to be an increasingly menacing shadow from Flo's past. With it's collection of complex and eccentric characters, unexpected plot twists and unsettling humor, director Denis Cote (Curling, Bestiaire) has created an original film that is as once traumatizing, uplifting, and utterly breathless.